"Code Monkey" is a song on Jonathan Coulton's sixth album, Thing a Week Three. It is one of Jonathan's most recognizable and best known songs, a concert staple and an identifier of his place in the geek rock genre.

History

"Code Monkey" was released as the twenty-ninth Thing a Week on April 14th, 2006. Jonathan claims in the blog entry for "Code Monkey" that the song isn't autobiographical, though he did use the term "code monkey" to refer to himself and his co-workers.

Shortly after its release, "Code Monkey" was linked to on Slashdot.org; the resultant traffic overload caused jonathancoulton.com to go down for over twenty-four hours.

Other versions

Quick Stop Entertainment sponsored a "Code Monkey Remix" contest from November 11th, 2006, to December 19th, 2006. Contestants were able to download the source files for the song and remix them as they saw fit. Four of the five winning entries can be found here. One of the winners, Kristen Shirts, has since gone on to cover other Jonathan Coulton songs; she has also accompanied Jonathan live at several concerts in New York City as well as at the San Francisco DVD show.

Fred Leo created a version of Code Monkey with an additional guitar track after Jonathan made a remark as to how boring the existing guitar parts sound. It is available from one of his blog posts. [1]

Jonathan has also created two "PG" versions of "Code Monkey", where the "cuss words" ("goddamn" and "crap") have been blanked out (blog entry here) and one with the "bad words reversed" (blog entry here).

Live performance

"Code Monkey" is one of Jonathan's most regularly played songs; it is believed that Jonathan has performed it in every concert since its release. In live performances, the song is typically slowed down tremendously from the Thing a Week release, becoming more of a ballad. When performing with Paul and Storm, they usually accompany Jonathan with backing vocals. In addition, the song has been played in multiple variations; while accompanied by Kristen Shirts on ukelele, with Emily doing the Code Monkey Dance, or Jonathan himself using a Tenori-on.

Trivia

"Code Monkey" is listed as one of the four most popular songs on Jonathan Coulton's Listening Suggestions page.

Availability

Downloads

"Code Monkey" is available for purchase in the Jonathan Coulton MP3 Store as an individual track or as part of Thing a Week III. Of course, this song is also included as part of the "Everything" playlist.